[GB] Company Profile - Burnley & Pendle

In this week's Company Profile, we'll stay with one of Transdev Blazefield's subsidiary companies - Transdev Burnley & Pendle.



Burnley & Pendle was formerly a Stagecoach company, but in 2001, following continual decline of passenger numbers resulted by their poor services, the operation, along with the Blackburn-based operation, was sold to Blazefield Holdings. Since then, Blazefield has put in substantial investment to renew the fleet and improve its services and network.



A number of former Stagecoach vehicles would, of course, continue to serve for a few years after the takeover, like this B6LE/ALX200 which served up to early this year:



A number of former Stagecoach buses did not stay that long though, like this Volvo Citybus and former Scottish Highland Olympian. Ironically, both would, one way or the other, found their way back with Stagecoach after they left Burnley & Pendle - The B10M was sold to Lincolnshire Road Car and the Olympian to Cavalier in Huntington, both of which would be bought by Stagecoach in 2005 and 2008 respectively.





Since Blazefield took over the operation, it promptly started to renew the fleet and relaunch its services. A major order was placed for Wright bodied Volvo B10BLEs, which were used to relaunch the Burnley services under the Mainline branding:



...and introduce new B7TLs to the busy X43 service to Manchester:



Apart from new buses, a few buses were transferred from its sister companies, like this former Keighley & District B10B:



...whilst a couple of B7L demonstrators joined the fleet in the turn of 2001/02:



The fleet renewal progress continued, and in 2006, the 5-year old B7TLs on the X43 service were replaced by newer, higher-spec version, and the service was relaunched as The Witch Way:





Meanwhile, the local Burnley service also received new buses this year, in the form of the first production examples of the odd-looking Optare Versas:



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